Webster v. Steele

• Decision Date: 30 September 1874
• Citation: 75 Ill. 544,1874 WL 9290
• Parties: SIDNEY T. WEBSTER et al.v.GEORGE STEELE et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

75 Ill. 544

1874 WL 9290 (Ill.)

SIDNEY T. WEBSTER et al.

v.GEORGE STEELE et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

September Term, 1874.

APPEAL from the Superior Court of Cook county; the Hon. JOHN A. JAMESON, Judge, presiding.

Messrs. WAITE & CLARK, for the appellants.

Messrs. MILLER & FROST, for the appellees.

Mr. JUSTICE SCOTT delivered the opinion of the Court:

While our statute in regard to garnishment, under which this proceeding was commenced in the court below, is comprehensive in its provisions, we do not think equitable claims can be subjected to this process. The terms employed are, “indebted,” or “hath any effects or estate” in his custody or charge, enumerating “lands, tenements, goods, chattels, moneys, choses in action, credits and effects.” The “effects or estate,” spoken of, in the charge or custody of the garnishee, must belong to the defendant in attachment, or judgment debtor, and the choses in action or credits must be due or owing to him, and evidently must be of a legal and not equitable character. Session Laws 1872, p. 462.

A brief reference to the facts which are uncontroverted will aid our understanding of the exact question presented for decision. Arms, having obtained a judgment against Webster & Walch, instituted this proceeding against defendants to collect his judgment, charging that they, or some of them, were indebted to Webster. Answers for two of the defendants having been filed, disclosed the fact that E. A. Buck, for the use of Sidney T. Webster, had previously obtained judgment against Steele, Vogle & Crandall, in the Superior Court of Chicago, from which George Steele had taken an appeal to the Supreme Court of the State, with James Steele as his surety on the appeal bond, and that the judgment was thereafterwards affirmed. The appeal bond, like the judgment, was in the name of Buck for the use of Webster. Under the statute cited, the question arises, can George and James Steele, or indeed any of the garnishees named, be held liable as garnishees of Webster? Clearly there is no legal indebtedness from any of the garnishees due or owing to Webster, that could be enforced in any action at law in his own name, and, unless equitable claims can be subjected to this process, this suit must fail.

The present statute, in all its essential features, is like the act of 1845 upon the same subject, which this court has had frequent occasion to construe. Proceedings authorized by both acts are the same, and the right secured is almost in identical language. Process is to be served upon all persons “who are in anywise indebted to such defendant,” and in all proceedings in garnishment after judgment and execution, the court into which the process is returnable “shall examine and proceed against such garnishee or garnishees in the same manner as is required by law against garnishees in original attachments.” As was said in May v. Baker, 15 Ill. 90, the indebtedness referred to in the statute is legal indebtedness, such as could be enforced in a court of law by an action in the name of the defendant in attachment against the garnishee. The principle is, that process of garnishment, being a legal proceeding given by statute, only entitles a party to recover such indebtedness as could be recovered by an action of debt, or indebitatus assumpsit, in the name of the attachment or judgment debtor against the garnishee. And so the authorities elsewhere hold. Harrell v. Whitman, 19 Ala. 135; Hassie et ux. v. G. I. W. U. Congregation, 35 Cal. 378.

The statute will bear no other construction than that heretofore given to it. The reason is obvious. By the practice which obtains in this State, the judgment against the garnishee must be rendered in favor of the attachment or judgment...